ArcelorMittal is facing an exodus of senior management at its India office, with about 20 top executives, including its CEO for Greenfield Projects, Sanak Mishra, quitting. Mishra was spearheading the Odisha project and had joined the company in 2006 in its erstwhile avatar of Mittal Steel, after spending 30 years with state-owned SAIL.

The world’s largest steelmaker had announced in 2005 and 2006 with much fanfare setting up of two mega steel plants in Jharkhand and Orissa, entailing an investment of $12 billion on each project. Later, it announced seting up another project of $6 billion, this time in Karnataka. All the projects, however, are facing delays on some counts.

Last month it said the company was exiting $12 billion project in Orissa. Multiple talks with company’s present and former executives revealed that after Orissa exit, they are not expecting any big progress on the remaining two projects due to the prevailing issues, be it regulatory or problems in acquiring land and securing captive iron ore mine.